$3 billion pothole plan faces long road to L.A. ballot: Editorial

Heeding good advice, the city councilmen pushing a $3 billion plan to fix Los Angeles’ crumbling roads decided last winter to slow down and take more time to sell it to residents. Did they ever: The Save Our Streets initiative originally ticketed for the May 2013 ballot won’t be put to voters before November 2014.

That’s a long time from now, but it still may not be enough time to cross all of the t’s and write an initiative that proves persuasive to the two-thirds of voters needed for passage.

The t’s are the higher taxes that would be part of any plan to finance a bond to pay for a 10-year program to repair the one-third of L.A. streets that need complete reconstruction.

Would voters react as they did last year to California’s Proposition 30, approved by 55 percent (two-thirds wasn’t required) who thought small tax hikes to prevent school budget cuts sounded better than the alternative? Or would they react as they did in March to L.A.’s Measure A, defeated because most doubted a city sales-tax hike was needed to prevent police and fire department cuts?

The issues are similar.

Councilmen Mitch Englander of the San Fernando Valley and Joe Buscaino of the Harbor Area say a 60-year backlog of needed repairs has left L.A. with the worst-conditioned streets of any major U.S. city. They say potholes and other pavement problems cause an extra $750 a year in damage to the average vehicle, drive down property values and hurt business. If that’s true, higher property, sales and gas taxes or vehicle fees to get rid of this trouble would be a good investment.

And Buscaino and Englander say the hurried-up, 10-year repair plan is the best way to keep that $3 billion cost from continuing to balloon — it has grown from $1.5 billion since 2005, when the city switched its street-repair focus to the more affordable task of maintaining well-paved roads.

But voters may hear that and think: Why should we trust more tax money to the City Hall that managed to fall 60 years behind on street upkeep? Why should we pay more for the city to perform a core service that should be in the existing budget? If we bail out the city this time, what’s the plan to avoid falling behind again?

Also: What’s the corresponding plan for the city’s broken sidewalks?

After first pitching their proposal last year, Englander and Buscaino backed off on asking City Council colleagues to put it on the May ballot after neighborhood councils and other community leaders called for more public input. The two men undertook a listening tour on this issue that is symbolic of the City Hall dysfunction.

Council members approved further study last week. Let’s hope the result will be a detailed plan for what Angelenos would pay and what they’d get for it; transparency on what repairs would be done, when, and who’s responsible; and a strategy for the future. And let’s hope city leaders would spend the next year trying to impress voters by showing fiscal responsibility on all matters.

Advertisement

Then voters can decide.

One more thing backers of the Save Our Streets plan should produce: Plan B, to use in the not unlikely case voters say no.